On stage: Six-time Grammy winner's life story plays out in new musical 'Born for This'

Jody Feinberg The Patriot Ledger

Saturday

Jun 9, 2018 at 6:04 AMJun 10, 2018 at 1:35 PM

On stage: Six-time Grammy winner's life story plays out in new musical

When someone has a good story, it should be told. Six-time Grammy Award singer Bebe Winans has created the new musical, “Born for This” based on his improbably musical journey.

Although Winans had starred in “The Color Purple” on Broadway in 2008, he never considered a musical about his life, until his friend Roberta Flack suggested it that year. A decade later, ArtsEmerson has brought it to the Cutler Majestic Theatre, where it begins a four-week run June 15.

“You have to be brave when writing anything about your life,” said Winans, 55, who lives in Nashville. “It’s the good, bad and ugly. It was very therapeutic because it caused me to go back and remember and make peace with things. It was a very inspiring journey.”

As teenagers in the Winans family gospel dynasty of Detroit, Bebe and Cece became famous after television evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker cast them on their Praise the Lord Network in the mid-1980s and moved them to North Carolina. After the siblings left the show after four years to pursue their own careers as a duet, Winans grappled with the conflict between two competing desires: serving God and spirituality versus satisfying his ego and commercial recording interests.

Unlike a jukebox musical with a story built around previous songs, Winans wrote new gospel, R&B and pop songs for the musical, putting in it just a few of his hits, such as “I Owe You Me” and “Hold Up the Light.” “Applause,” a new song, is his favorite in the show, because of its message and because it is sung to him and his sister by Whitney Houston, a close friend in real life whose funeral he sang at in 2012.

“It’s about how when we love the applause and attention, we may do something we really don’t want to do. Don’t live for the applause because you’ll get lost,” he said. “Everyone knows about addiction to alcohol, but many don’t understand about addiction to fame, which can destroy one’s life.”

To shape his story into a narrative, Winans co-wrote the book with Charles Randolph-Wright, who also directed the musical. Randolph-Wright also directed and wrote the book for “Motown: The Musical.” Winans said the adaptability of a musical is particularly exciting for him.

“Once a recording is out, you can’t change it, but a show evolves,” he said. “Everywhere it’s run, we’ve made it better and added new songs.”

The show’s title comes from Winans’ song, “Born for This,” and in its earliest form in 2014, the musical was a workshop at ArtsEmerson. The full production then ran in Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and Santa Monica, starring his nephew and niece as Bebe and his Cece. The Boston production has a new cast with Donald Webber, Jr. and Loren Lott as Bebe and Cece.

“We invited many of our community partners to get a glimpse of what we had been up to (with the workshop) and the music and story just swept them away,” said ArtsEmerson artistic director David Dower. “At the end of the presentation, the whole group just turned toward me, demanding that we get this show back to Boston as soon as possible. And now we’re finally here.”

During the 17 years covered by the musical, Winans tells the story of the dramatic changes when he joined the Bakkers in North Carolina, the tension between him and Cece over career aspirations, the trauma of the death of his closest brother, his destructive gambling and obsession with fame, and his pivotal decision to sing gospel even as he became influenced by pop.

“All the surroundings changed and my world became a different one,” said Winans, who was 17 when he left home to live in an apartment near the Bakkers with his sister, Cece, 15. “It was scary and exciting to meet other people and learn from them.”

Exposed to a national public and the first African-Americans on Praise the Lord, he also had to deal with racism, approaching it as his family taught him.

“I engaged with people, even ones who didn’t like me or were racist,” Winans said. “The gospel was the foundation that my parents gave me, and laughter is one of the traditions of my family. I learned I can’t control what others do, but I can control my reaction. Instead of getting angry, I learned to laugh and that empowered me.”

Although financial improprieties and a sex scandal destroyed the Bakkers’ success, Winans feels indebted to them and remains connected with Jim (Tammy Faye died of cancer in 2007).

“They taught us how to deliver a song to connect to the millions of people watching,” he said. “And they promised my parents they would take good care of us, and they did. When you work closely with people, you realize that all of us have our strengths and weaknesses. Even though I may disagree with a lot of what they said or did, I still love them. Even to this day, Jim is someone I’ll call and talk to.”

Winans also had tension with Cece, who did not share his ambition to be famous and sing throughout the world. The stress of that conflict with her, his own feelings about fame, and the devastating loss of his closest brother, Ronald, led him to gamble.

“I’d forget my troubles and sit down at the blackjack table,” said Winans, who recorded five albums with Cece before embarking on a solo career in 1995. “Boy, did I get caught up in that, and it almost destroyed my life. I broke the gambling with time and the love of God.”

At times, Winans has felt pulled in competing directions, from the faith community who wanted him to sing solely gospel and the record producers who wanted him to abandon it for pop, where he would be able to make more money and perform more widely.

“I decided to go down the road I believed I was created to go down,” he said. “I knew my music was a contemporary style of inspirational music. I’m glad I made the decision to stay with it, because I reached some great places without compromise.”

Whether or not someone is a performer, everyone is likely to struggle to make their dreams happen, said Winans, who said he hopes his musical is not just entertaining, but meaningful for them.

“I really want people who see the show to be inspired to stay determined and go after those things which they might have thought were too hard,” he said.

Reach Jody Feinberg at jfeinberg@patriotledger.com. Follow her on Twitter at JodyF_Ledger